2016freezer,
glue,
Missouri,
super glue
“What’s the permanence of super
glue?” someone asked me the other day. It’s an interesting question and unfortunately, the answer is, it depends.
If keep the object indoors in a temperature and humidity controlled environment and away from a lot of of
side by side force, it’s pretty permanent. You can debond super
glue with chemicals like acetone. But if you don’t do that, it will last decades. I have stuff I glued together 25 years ago that’s still holding together fine.
But super
glue is very sensitive to side to side movement. Its up and down strength is exceptional, but it’s brittle, like a lot of rocks. If you bang your head on
granite you’ll regret it. But if you drop a piece of
granite on the ground, it will shatter. Super
glue is like that. Its tensile strength is great but its sheer strength leaves something to be desired.
I once glued a post on a
ceiling fan back together. It held for a few years, but then when I bumped the
fan one day, it popped right back apart.
It’s also really sensitive to temperature. Put something you glued together in the
freezer overnight, then when you take it out, you can pull it back apart rather easily. So if I glued something together and put it outside, I wouldn’t expect it to get through the month of January in Missouri. July maybe, but definitely not January. So when you use super glue outdoors, it’s definitely a temporary fix.